


dust from gold

by infiniteoceansofblue



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Cabeswater - Freeform, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Post-The Raven King, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-18 02:26:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14203047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infiniteoceansofblue/pseuds/infiniteoceansofblue
Summary: After Gansey dies twice and lives twice, he is never quite the same. Cabeswater tries its best, but humans are complicated and messy things. Because of this, some things change. In the end, everything that really matters does not.It's still a beautiful life.





	dust from gold

Gansey lives, again.

 

He opens his eyes, and the first thing that he thinks of is his mother. It’s a memory, from years and years ago. Lifetimes ago. A memory he shouldn’t have, but somehow just does. It comes from somewhere deep within his core, and he _knows_ it, with startling clarity.

 

In the memory, he is pressed tightly against his mother’s chest, as if she is trying to shield him from the world. Her tears land on his face, warm and brackish.

 

He doesn’t know why she is crying. He is too small to ask. He should be too small to understand anything at all. But he does.

 

She closes her eyes and presses her forehead against his. With a paper-thin voice, she whispers a secret to the soft, brown hair on the top of his head: “I don’t know how to do this anymore.”

 

Gansey lives, for the second time. He opens his eyes, he thinks of his mother, and he cries.

 

+

 

Ronan tries to help him stand, but his legs crumble beneath him. Everything feels strange, foreign, _wrong_.

 

This thought triggers something in his mind, which in turn triggers something in his tear glands, which in turn rips a pathetic sob through his mouth.

 

“Hey, hey, you’re okay,” Ronan says, his arms wrapped tightly around Gansey’s shoulders, arms that are the only things keeping from collapsing to the ground. Gansey can hear the sharp worry in Ronan’s scratchy, grief-stricken voice. He should say something. He should say something to help, he should tell them that he is okay, he should apologize. But all he can do is cry. His chest feels so weird. Not empty, like he imagined his second death might feel like before empty became nothing, but rather, too full.

 

Henry’s babbling in the background, a long string of thoughts and words and the occasional “holy fucking shit”.

 

Blue’s face is suddenly in his. She’s been crying - she’s still crying - and her eyes are red and wild. “Oh my God,” she whispers, over and over again. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.” Her hands cup his face, and he suddenly rears back. They’re so warm, or his face is so cold (cold means dead, dead means alive; how can anything make sense again if he defies the most natural order of the world?). Suddenly, he wants to vomit.

 

He does so, very ungracefully. It burns his throat and orange juice and bile splatter on the ground.

 

“Whoa,” Ronan half-says, half yelps. His hand rubs large circles against Gansey’s back as he heaves.

 

“Let him sit,” says Adam. It’s the first thing he’s said since Gansey died and lived again, and Adam’s looking at him but not really. For a second, Gansey doesn’t even know if he is actually here and that thought makes his throat tighten, and he retches again, but this time only air. “I think he’s hurt or something.”

 

“You think?” Ronan grumbles but obliges. Gansey is gently lowered onto the ground into a sitting position, Ronan’s arm still pressed firmly against the small of his back, a constant reminder that he is still here.

 

Gansey’s not hurt - but there’s a pounding in his head that’s making everything a bit messy to look at and his chest, his _fucking_ _chest_ , and his limbs feel like they don’t belong to him and he can’t stop crying. He’s not hurt. But when he tries to say so, all that comes out is his grief, loud and consuming.

 

Adam kneels down in front of him, next to Blue. His eyes are so clear, his brow furrowed with concern. Gansey wants to tell him anything that will make that worry disappear, but his tongue hangs heavy and useless in his mouth.

 

 _I’m okay,_  he tries to say. What comes out instead is: “I don’t know how to do this anymore.” His voice is choked and cracking, the sound of it so wrong even though it is right. For now, it is easier to recycle words he has heard rather than create his own. (They can only be used for destruction.)

 

Adam’s expression twists at Gansey’s words and a single tear rolls slowly down his cheek.

 

Gansey brushes it away with a shaking hand. He is struck, abruptly, with aching sadness at Adam’s sadness. Adam doesn’t deserve to be anything but happy, always happy. Something in him feels so splintered at the idea of Adam; Adam, who is so rarely happy. Adam, who the universe has been so unkind to.

 

There are so many things that are wrong.

 

Gansey, alive when he should be dead. Noah, dead when he should be alive. Cabeswater, gone. Glendower, a fool’s quest. All of them, lost.

 

He doesn’t know who he is crying for. Noah, Cabeswater, Glendower, Persephone. The list is endless. He is crying for everyone.

 

He is crying for himself.

 

Adam wraps his arms carefully around his shaking shoulders. “Can we go home?” Gansey whispers. He doesn’t really know where home is, really, or what he’s talking about, but Gansey knows Adam will understand even when he does not.

 

“Yeah,” Adam whispers back. “Let’s go home.”

 

+

 

Blue doesn’t know what she’d expected. She’s always considered herself to be a practical person. Someone rarely taken by unrealistic fantasies and idealism. But she’d expected something better than this. She always knew the ending wouldn’t be perfect. They all knew Noah was inevitably gone, and she’d been living with the reality of Gansey’s death for long before she even knew his name and with it his heart.

 

But she didn’t expect this. She didn’t expect Gansey with eyes swollen and hollowed out, eyes leaking tears like they’d become two broken faucets. She expected his grief, but she didn’t expect his silence, his fear, his emptiness.

 

She didn’t expect to feel so lost. Glendower was Gansey’s quest, but somewhere in the mess of it all, it became her quest, too.

 

“Sweetheart,” says Maura, jarring Blue out of her thoughts. Her mother hands her a mug of warm tea, a crease of worry in the space between her brows.

 

Maura sits down next to her on the couch. They are silent for only a few minutes but Blue thinks it could maybe be forever and it would still feel the same.

 

“Talk to me,” Maura whispers, and her voice is so gentle Blue has to swallow against the lump in her throat just to breathe. “Put your head down.” Blue complies, willing to be sheltered by her mother like a little girl, her head fitting perfectly in the small nook between Maura’s shoulder and neck.

 

It’s a little easier to breathe, but not much.

 

“What time is it?” she asks, once she trusts her voice enough that she’s sure it won’t do something stupid, like cry.

 

“Two in the morning.”

 

Blue blinks in surprise. Time functions out of linearity in Cabeswater, but for some reason, the amount of time that passed is shocking. How long has she been sitting here? The past few hours are a blur of tears and confusion, but she starts picking apart the moments in between the chaos. 

 

Mr. Gray had carried Gansey into 300 Fox Way from the Pig, parked hazardously in the driveway. Somewhere along the ride home (Ronan driving, hands steady but gaze filled with something hard Blue recognized often in him but could never explain; Henry in the passenger’s seat, out of depth and no longer chattering; Blue and Adam flanking Gansey’s sides in the backseat), Gansey had lost consciousness. No matter how much they shook his shoulders and whispered and shouted and swore, Gansey was gone to the world. Ronan started driving even faster and it was only then that Blue remembered to call her mother.

 

When they reached 300 Fox Way, her entire family was there waiting for them. Mr. Gray was the one that carried Gansey inside. Her mother wrapped thick quilts around all of their hunched shoulders and hurried them into the yellow warmth of home. Ronan had hurried after Mr. Gray-carrying-Gansey and Blue’s aunts into a side bedroom. Adam had sat down on a stool, eyes blinking heavily, flitting in and out of realization. (Orla sat down next to him with a first aid kit and carefully bandaged his cuts, silent for the first time in her life.) Henry had excused himself to the bathroom with a mumbled apology and didn’t come out for what felt like forever.

 

And Blue? She would have been right next to Ronan, demanding to be next to Gansey. But, instead, she sat down numbly on the couch. The same couch she’d sat on millions of times in her life. The couch she’d pretended was a spaceship or a carriage when she was a little girl. The couch she used to stuff snacks and hidden treasures into its worn cushions. She sat down. And she was afraid. Because the worst was over. Because Gansey had been slumped next to her, pale and streaked and maybe a little broken, but he was there. But even though it was better than she’d ever hoped for, there was still the fear, hovering low in her stomach, and her fear had scared her more than anything else.

 

Blue blinks again, forcing herself out of the fragmented memories. “Is he awake, yet?”

 

Maura sighs. “Still out of it. I don’t know - none of us know, really, what’s wrong. We think it’s probably from the sudden stress of it all. Some form of shock, whether it be magically induced or something else.”

  
_Something else._ Blue swallows. There is no handbook for when a boy dies when he is not supposed to and then lives when he is not supposed to. She has no idea what to do. “Can I see him?”

 

“Of course. Ronan’s with him, now.” Maura smiles at her, and it’s tired and a bit faded around the edges, but it’s still her mother’s smile and Blue has been lucky enough to have seen that smile practically every day for eighteen years, and suddenly, all she wants to do is be five again.

 

“Mom,” Blue whispers, and that’s all she needs to say. Maura envelops her in a hug.

 

Eventually, Maura pulls away. “You can do this, Blue. Listen to me. _You can do this_.”

 

_But what if I can’t? What if Gansey never wakes up and what if we’re never okay again and what if you’re wrong?_

 

She takes a shuddering breath and blows out her doubts with a heavy sigh. Gansey’s going to be okay. They’re all going to be okay.

 

(They have to be.)

 

 

_tbc_

**Author's Note:**

> i just love these kids so fucking much. they deserve to be happy. (oops.) 
> 
> more tags will be added later! thanks for reading and please leave a comment, they keep me breathing. 
> 
> my [tumblr](https://infiniteoceansofblue.tumblr.com/) 


End file.
